After stepping away from the runway, Paco Naya returned this weekend at Tenerife International Fashion Week 2025 with BLANCA, a deeply personal and hauntingly beautiful collection. Paco Naya, known for presenting just one collection per year, used his comeback to tell a story not just through garments, but through memory, emotion, and confrontation.
The Story behind ..
BLANCA is an homage to the designer’s aunt—a woman raised in a world of religious absolutes, taught to fear sin and venerate icons. The collection captures her journey: from imposed devotion to a liberated, self-defined faith. It’s a story of internal rebellion, quiet transformation, and ultimately, rebirth.
The Pieces
The collection unfolds in 17 looks, each shaped by tension—between tradition and reinvention, between weight and lightness, between past and present.
Oversized dresses and quilted coats ( a signature ) dominate the runway, their volume giving physical form to emotional weight. Material contrasts: like tulle offer movement and softness, while neoprene, twill, and structured wool bring solidity and control. Virgin Mary medals become ornamentation—draped on jackets, pants, bras and skirts, are used like armor. These aren’t embellishments; they’re symbols of both reverence and resistance. Reworked garments tell stories of transformation—each one previously worn, now cut, reassembled, and charged with new meaning.
Visual Language
Paco Naya leans into Christian iconography without irony. The prints—a collage of sacred images, stylized halos, and celestial motifs—and ordinary people don’t just decorate; they narrate. They speak of inherited beliefs, of questioning, of pushing back. The collection doesn’t preach. It doesn’t judge. It simply asks: How much of what we believe is truly ours?
Standout Looks
A ceremonial iacket with stitched medals and papel silhouette. A flowing pinafore printed dress cinched above the waist with a belt around the neck, equal parts relic and runway. A medal short short & tulle lace lingerie look, fragile and defiant. A long printed skirt with sacred motifs, paired with a bra medaled minimal top—a conversation between excess and silence.
A Personal Note
As I watched BLANCA unfold on the catwalk, I couldn’t help but think of my own story.
Not sure how but at one point I attended a university run by the Opus Dei—a space where doctrine was part of the curriculum, and questioning was quietly discouraged. At the time, I didn’t even fully understand what that meant. But for a little time I felt the pressure to conform. To believe. To behave. To shrink.
Troubled and very soon, I found my own way—away from that version of faith and into something less rigid, more honest. Like Blanca in the collection, I reshaped what I inherited into something I could actually wear—spiritually speaking.
That’s why BLANCA hit differently. Because we all have our own journey with spirituality. Some of us follow the light we’re given; others have to carve it out ourselves. Paco Naya understands that. And in BLANCA, he’s given us not just clothes, but a mirror.
ALL fotos by Abel Carlos Lafranconi